Monday, June 9, 2014

SA:On the Road:Festivals ’14:South Park & Kivenlahti Rock

Friday 6.6.2014- South Park, Tampere, Finland
This seems to become the summer of trainrides ;-) Our buddy up here in the north
who used to have a bus just changed it and the new one won’t be ready for this summer so we’re gonna travel by train….which is quite easy and fast but unfortunately you can’t smoke on the trains in Finland anymore so…we’ll see how it goes. Nevertheless got up quite early and then headed for the trainstation in Kemi for the 0735 train towards Tampere. Spent most of the time online searching for all kinds of useless and useful stuff. This weekend  will be quite interesting since tonight we’re playing the first summer festival and tomorrow we’ll do a special set at the Kivenlahti Rock, where we’ll play the songs that got the most  votes from our fans. (unfortunately we only had 27 songs on the list to choose from, the ones we know how to play at the moment…no time to rehearse more with this schedule..)

At around 1500 we arrived in Tampere and made our way to the hotel before being picked up for the festival by Elias. Dinner at the festival, a short meeting with our manager and then it was time for a signing session….which all went smooth fast and before we knew it, it was time to get ready for the show. Since we’re playing totally different sets tonight and tomorrow we’ll be performing 20 different songs over these two days. Anyways. tonigh we played a 75min set which was a blend of old and new stuff. It was a bit shaky being the first festival of this season  and us not having played together since the last European Show in Madrid a month ago. We did have a great time though and the rain that had been pouring down like hell actually stopped for our show….at least that was the impression I got. Just before Blood we got a bit confused 
because we heard some guitar shredding in our in-ear monitors…turned out it was the Skid  Row crew testing their equipment and there was some radio interference…well at least they succeeded to make Tony fuck up some of the lyrics :-) Other than that there were no problems during the show…I did however start Fullmoon too fast so I had to slow down a bit when Tony started singing….no idea why but sometimes these thing happends…it’s not like I don’t know in which tempo Fullmoon starts, having played it almost 700 times live already.

After the show I chatted for awhile with Pyry and Janne from our friends in Battle Beast who where at the festival partying and preparing for their gig the next day, I’m sure they’ll kick ass like always. I quickly got my stuff together and jumped in the van with the pyrosquad and left for Ari’s mansion and a late night sauna. Somehow I didn’t feel like staying at the hotel tonight  so this was the other choice. Some hours later I finished the night with some wine, sauna and a couple of episodes of Orange is the New Black season 2 on netflix….nighty night.

Saturday 7.6.2014-Kivenlahti Rock, Espoo, Finland
Felt really rested when I woke up and it was time to leave for Kivenlahtirock. In the van I spent my time listening to Santa Cruz since we decided last night in the sauna that I would do the pyros for them today. Jiiihaa !!! Great band and good songs this was awesome. The rest  of the day was spent talking about some stuff that we didn’t have time to do last night with our manager and a short video interview. So now the plans for next year start to surface and we’ll of course let you all know as soon as things are set and agreed upon.  The show went quite well tonight, it was a bit weird to play the songs that were voted for and try to get them into some reasonable order….we started with Victoria’s Secret and ended with Don’t say a word. Less than 30min after the show we were already in the cab and on our way to the railwaystation. 2 hours by train to tampere and then a change of trains and  finally we got our sleeper coaches and managed to get to bed :-) 

Sunday 8.6.2014-Travel Home
Woke up just before the train arrived in Kemi at around 10 in the morning. The festival
season has begun…now we have two weekends off before our final stretch of 8 weekends in a row. Better spend the time getting my parts for Ecliptica ready…..

Sun and good happiness stuff !!!
Henkka


If we'll ever get burned or hurt because of the pyros, you can blame these guys, Ari & Miika
#crazymotherfuckers #dangerouspeople #besafe #ifyouseemerunningcatchup


13 comments:

  1. Sun and good happiness stuff back atcha ;)

    As I've already said South Park was awesome, and even if the team was cut in half because of work obligations (damn real life, getting in the way of what's important!) We had a blast! Didn't feel shaky at all, and Tony garbling the lyrics was histerical! But really these days it seems Full Moon you get more distracted on, maybe BECAUSE you've played it so many times! You should give it some new twist! :)

    (A bit annoyed we didn't see the signing tent in time and didn't get a chance to say hi but...well it's not like we haven't met before I guess ;))

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  2. So we are starting with the hashtags now? I want to see what will we have later :P
    Cheers dude!

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    1. no we won't ;-) just couldn't resist the hashtags with this kinda picture...

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  3. Henkka using hashtags? Now my day is complete, haha :D
    Didn't have a chance to completely check out ATWTP yet sadly... But what I heard so far sure sounds promising, so I'm looking forward to the rest. Hopefully the CD will arrive soon...
    Love that you got to have some fun with pyros, but shouldn't we be more afraid of you than those other guys? Just kidding of course, I'm sure you're totally responsible and mature and careful and stuff... ;)

    Don't worry about mistakes, that's what makes every festival and concert unique. Would be boring if everything went as planned all the time, right?
    By the way, during the signing session in Tampere was a girl who said hi to you from Maria. Don't know if you remember something like that, but... Hi from me :) Wish I could have been there myself.

    Great idea with the fan-voted setlist btw... You haven't been inspired by Metallica's By Request tour on that one, have you? ;)

    Oh, and another question. Those stories you once asked for, is it too late now to submit something? I just now found the link for that one...

    Cheers for now!
    Maria

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    1. No it's not too late for the stories...it seems to be a thing that lasts forever to get going but rest assured we'll let you know as soon as we can...

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  4. Haha! shaking the life! Thanks for sharing with us, as always. You're great. Congratulations for the soloist album and good luck!! (You chose excellent partenaires ;) -

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  5. saw someone ask about the stories thing, reminded me that I really wanted to apologize for the story I sent in. I don't know what I was thinking at the time.

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  6. I had a fun weekend, with two totally different shows... I thought the voted setlist would be absolutely boring, since it was all the same old, same old, but shouldn't have doubted you, you kicked ass like always! A good way to start the summer of festivals.

    Blood was mostly hilarious, poor Tony was a mess :D But as said before, these thing happen, better luck next time :)

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  7. Hi Henkka. I hope you had a decent amount of recreation and relaxation during you off time, because it sounded like you still had a lot to do before your tour started up again. Did you manage to finish the re-recording of Ecliptica or work more on your next solo project like you had hoped?
    Wishing you guys all the best with your weekend tour shows! Looking forward to hearing all about them!

    Cheers!
    Tracey

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    1. Still working on the Ecliptica thing... :-) I'll let you all know when we're done with it !

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  8. Hey, just noticed the ol' Lanceland blog is frozen - did you just lock it up because you're not using it, or is it something you should know about?

    Have fun tonight playing on home turf! I imagine a lot of the audience will be Klingenbergs and Kauppinens, lol

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    1. It freezes up whenever you get to a certain amount of visits, which is not that hight btw...and I'm not doing anything there anymore so I don't really pay attention to that...

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    2. Ah, ok. I can see why you switched to a different platform, it sounds like a pain in the ass!!

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